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All Copyright Steve Litchfield, 2000-2006
I’ve just upgraded from a Psion Series 5 to a
Series 5mx. Most things work OK, but Word is proving a problem, with
‘Create new file…’ not working. The template system also
doesn’t seem to be working. Is this a known problem?
Tell us, did you by any chance simply restore all your
backup files from the Series 5 to the new 5mx? We’ve seen strange
application behaviour in these circumstances, usually because Series 5-specific
.INI files aren’t handled properly on the newer palmtop, running a
different version of the EPOC operating system. Much better to copy over just
your document folders manually. The contents of the 5mx’s
‘\System’ folder are best left alone, with Word and other
applications creating .INI files as necessary. Backup your 5mx, hard reset it
(see the manual for how to do this) and then use Windows Explorer to manually
copy back everything but \System. If you had third party applications loaded on
the internal disk, you’ll need to re-install these.
I'm lusting after a new Nokia 9500 but seem to be stuck
back in the Psion age. My contacts are spread across a dozen Psion Series 3mx
Data files ('Business', 'Travel', etc.) and I also have an Agenda going back to
1997. I've tried several times to get my data out of my Psion and onto a newer
device in a sensible fashion, but have given up each time. Will I have more
success with the 9500?
In a very real sense, you (and many others) have become a
victim of the Psion's success. Because of its tremendous standalone
flexibility, users like yourself had databases for just about everything.
Modern devices like the 9500 work on a 'keep it simple, keep it synchronised'
principle and you'll have to make some serious decisions about which of your
databases are to make it into Contacts and which should be left as standalone
files, perhaps in a third party database such as YData or PowerBase. Your
biggest problem will be getting your databases into the right format for
importing into YData or a PC PIM system. We strongly suggest that you perform a
basic export of your data from Psion Data into a plain text file and then
import this into Microsoft Excel (or OpenOffice Sheet). Once you can see your
data laid out in front of you, you'll be able to sort out empty fields,
embedded line feeds and all the other things which can cause database import
routines to complain. Good luck, you'll need it, plus plenty of time and
patience.
Agenda is slightly easier to handle if you can borrow
someone's Series 5. Use PsiWin to convert the Series 3 Agenda file to EPOC
format, copy it onto the Series 5 and then set up your PC sync settings to
extend back to the required date. Sync the Psion Series 5 to Outlook on the PC
and then use the Nokia 9500's PC Suite to sync with Outlook. Easy for us to
write down here but again do allow plenty of time. If all else fails, print all
Agenda entries prior to today as a 'General' text file and keep this on your
9500 for past reference. Manually enter your current appointments and any
birthdays in the 9500's Calendar application.
My trusty netBook has started playing up, with the
touch-screen often mis-registering my stylus taps. I’ve tried
recalibrating, to no avail, over and over again. Does this sound like a repair
job?
This is quite a common problem with Psion Series 7s and
netBooks. Your screen cable is loose and (in the worst case) may need
replacing. One quick fix is to press firmly on the ‘netBook’ (or
‘Series 7’) logo, above the keyboard. This is often enough to reseat
the cable and restore a solid connection for a while. If this doesn't work,
you'll need to partially disassemble your machine to get to the screen cable.
It's not too difficult but don’t try it if you don’t feel confident
with this sort of thing and we’re not going to go into too much detail
here. Essentially, you remove the logo label between the keyboard and display,
then remove the only screw that you’ll see. Lift off the top and then
extract the pins that hold the screen. When you get to the screen cable, a
semi-permanent repair is to insert a wedge of cardboard between the cable and
the base of the unit. Good luck!
I’m trying to synchronise my Psion 5mx to Outlook
on my PC, in order to get four years of Agenda and Contacts information over to
my new smartphone. However, nothing from Agenda appears to make it over to my
PC, even though no error messages get shown.
Actually yes. Do your Agenda entries have little
‘x’ icons beside them, by any chance? We’ll take an educated
guess that the ‘Synchronise with other calendars’ flag is unchecked
on each entry; in other words, the PsiWin synchronisation module is explicitly
told not to copy these entries over to your PC. If you’d caught this in
time, you could have set a more sensible default in ‘Tools | Entry
preferences | Day entry’, but as it is you’ll have to edit each entry
that currently shows the ‘x’ icon. If this is too laborious a
process, you might like to simply print off your whole Agenda to a
‘General’ text file, giving a searchable archive which you can view
on PC or on the smartphone
I’m trying to get a Hitachi 4GB Compact Flash type
II memory card working in my netBook, but this reported only 1K of space
available! If this card is not compatible then what’s the biggest drive
that will work in the netBook?
Your card will work, but the faint-hearted should look
away now! If you don’t feel confident at very technical matters, ask a
computer-savvy friend to assist. Your Compact Flash will probably be slightly
over 4GB in size, and this is beyond the netBook's limit. You need to reduce
its capacity by using ‘fdisk’, ‘diskpart’ or a similar
partitioning utility (e.g. ‘Partition Magic’) on your PC. The
threshold is actually 4096MB, so go for 4090MB, for example. Then format the
disk on your Psion and restore your files. One down side of using such a huge
disk is that its cluster size is going to be really large as well, so that even
small files will be allocated lots of space.
I’ve acquired a Series 5mx ‘Pro’ from
eBay, but it only seems to work in German. How can I change it to use
English?
The 5mx ‘Pro’ was officially only ever developed
for the German and Japanese markets, as far as we know, with 24MB of RAM and an
operating system that had to be booted from a special disk image on a Compact
Flash card (or on a connected serial computer). The idea was to see how
practical it was to be able to update customer machines with new versions of
the OS by simply sending them a card or having them download a file online. The
good news is that there’s no reason why your palmtop couldn’t be
booted with an English disk image instead. The bad news is that because a UK
‘Pro’ was never officially made, there’s no 'official' download
site for such a file. A suitable disk image was available from
http://gtm.tel.uva.es/xtep/en/download.htm
I’ve been using ‘BT Yahoo’ as my ISP,
using my Psion Revo and Nokia phone to deal with email when out and about. But
BT Yahoo has now decided that ‘SMTP authentication’ is now needed in
order to send emails through their servers. This is no problem on my PC, but my
Revo does not seem to have any options for SMTP authentication. What can I
do?
SMTP authentication is just one ISP tool in the big fight
against spammers, and you’re right, Psion’s 1999-vintage Email client
doesn’t support it. You have three options. Firstly, there’s the
freeware ‘SmtpAuth’, a Java
application that sits in the background and helps out with the authentication
when needed. The problem is that it’s tricky to set up and also uses a
huge (2MB minimum) amount of memory, making it impractical on your 8MB Revo
(though much more usable on the 5mx, of course).
Secondly, there’s
XJMail, another
freeware tool, thankfully far more resource-friendly. Unfortunately, the
documentation is often in poor English and XJMail itself is very different from
Psion’s Email client, but it might be worth a try. In addition to SMTP
authentication, it has a wealth of other ‘advanced’ features that
might be useful.
Finally, and perhaps most usefully as a quick, short-term
fix, simply switch to another dial-up (‘pay as you go’) ISP.
You’ll still be able to collect email from your old BT Yahoo POP3 mailbox,
don’t worry, while using your new ISP’s SMTP server for outgoing
emails. Note that, eventually, they’ll probably switch to SMTP
authentication as well.
For connecting my old Psion Series 5mx to my new
laptop, I have a USB to serial adaptor. This seems to be working properly but
it installs itself as COM5 and PsiWin only recognises COM1 to COM4 as possible
‘Connections’ in its ‘Properties’ dialog. How do get the
two to talk to each other?
Our guess is that you only plug the adaptor in once the
laptop’s up and running, by which time PsiWin’s connection server has
already started. Try rebooting the laptop with the USB to serial adaptor
plugged in. In this way, COM5 will exist when the connection server starts and
it should be offered as one of the choices in PsiWin’s Connections dialog.
If it still doesn’t appear, you may need to reinstall PsiWin, still with
the adaptor plugged in.
NEW: See my quick tutorial for sorting this out!
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